Visual Art
Reviews
KATE DAVIS. ' Sorcha Dallas Gallery. Glasgow .0...
TO HOCKNEY: DRAWINGS FROM THE ROYAL COLLECTION
The Queen's Gallery, Edinburgh, until 6 Mar 2005 O...
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CATHY WILKES
Switchspace. Glasgow. until Sat 18 Dec 0.... Cathy Wilkes makes difficult work. Her installations of sculpture, painting and altered objects are not explicitly tricksy, nor do they weave a complex web of allusion and reference; the difficulty comes instead from an inbuilt immunity to interpretation. It is as if the works are, almost defiantly, put in a place where they can be seen, and afterwards remembered. And that last point is key - Wilkes’ work doesn‘t defy quick assimilation because it is empty, but because it seems redolent with meaning, without serving that meaning up on a plate.
It makes for irresistibly sticky work that won’t let you alone. This quality does not carry over into a description. The work Wilkes has made for this show, in a long-abandoned hair salon, includes an old toothbrush sitting in an upturned light fitting and a glass and a cup, which are placed on the floor beneath a bathroom sink, draped with a thin black thread. There are squat little metal structures too, with upright sections joined by bars, and a small
collage-painting bearing the text ‘She‘s pregnant again‘. Written out, this sounds like the familiar mix of found stuff and slight construction, but in situ, Wilkes” installation coheres, joined together by the spatial relationship between the various components and their relationship to the surrounding shop. Almost all art, of course, is like this, meant to be experienced, not described, but Wilkes‘ installation is so bound up with itself, and the space in which it lives, that discussing it feels like spreading lies about an old friend behind his back. That Wilkes' work is tied so closely to its setting is doubly apt, too. This show is the last to be mounted by Switchspace, the organisation founded by Sorcha Dallas and Marianne Greated in 1999 to explore the possibilities of using alternative spaces to exhibit art, directly inspired by Wilkes‘ conversion of her flat into a gallery space. There could hardly be a more fitting tribute to the Switchspace curation project than this, an installation so attuned to its environs that it seems hard to believe it hasn‘t always been there. (Jack Mottram)
Installation shot